When the Board of Licensure in Medicine revokes or suspends a physician’s license in Maine for criminal or other activity harmful to patients, the public is told.

When the Maine Criminal Justice Academy revokes or suspends a certification of a police officer for criminal or other activity harmful to the public, the public is also told.

In these cases, we know in great detail when and why licenses and certifications are revoked or suspended.

Why, then, should we not know when and why the certifications of teachers are revoked or suspended?

Educators, holding fast to a 1913 teacher privacy law, argue that dissemination of this kind of information is harmful to the profession as a class. That it makes them look bad.

Wrong.

What makes them look bad is hiding that information from the public, shielding unprofessional conduct in our schools.

Public disclosure protects the credibility of doctors and police officers because it demonstrates that these professions police themselves and hold their members accountable. We have some assurance that if doctors and police officers engage in professional misconduct, they are disciplined, providing further assurance that others in these respective professions who maintain their licenses and certifications in good standing adhere to professional conduct.

All 24 of the Maine Board of Licensure in Medicine’s disciplinary actions taken against 19 doctors so far this year are online, listed alphabetically and easily searchable. Many of the revocations and suspensions are for substance abuse addictions and failure to pursue treatment, so the public has access to the status of doctors’ licenses and can make health care decisions based on that information.

We don’t have that accountability in the teaching profession and we need it. Our children need it and teachers themselves need it.

In 2001, a year after Maine adopted its mandatory fingerprinting and background law for all school employees, the state police reported that 1,324 of those employees had some kind of criminal background. That means that in the first full year of this program, at least 6 percent of all people employed in our schools carried criminal backgrounds. We just don’t know who these people are.

Although constitutional to gather the data on school employees, Maine law prohibits the release of specific information.

What Maine does wrong, Vermont gets right.

The Vermont Department of Education Web site lists – in detail – teacher revocations and suspensions alphabetically by name, school and reason. It doesn’t detail every complaint ever lodged against a teacher, but lists only those in which there was an investigation and absolute finding of wrongdoing.

It is not a pretty list.

A music teacher who had sexual contact with two female students.

A technical school teacher who slapped a student.

An elementary school teacher convicted of domestic assault and OUI.

A high school teacher who smoked pot with students, and was later convicted of OUI and leaving the scene of an accident.

An elementary school teacher who sexually assaulted a male student and manufactured child pornography.

A high school teacher convicted of smuggling drugs.

An elementary school teacher taping a student’s mouth closed.

In Vermont, bad teachers are exposed. In Maine, we protect their secrets. And that’s wrong.

The process Maine has in place for public disclosure of misconduct in medical and law enforcement professions can work for educators.

It’s a matter of accountability, of eliminating predators from our classrooms, of making certain that bad teachers are forced out of the profession.